Arthur Wing Pinero (redirected from AW Pinero)

Pinero, Arthur Wing 

Born May 24, 1855, in London; died there Nov. 23, 1934. English playwright.

Pinero was trained as a lawyer, but from 1874 to 1884 he acted in the theaters of Edinburgh and London. His plays are drawn from the life of various strata of English society, as demonstrated by The Magistrate (staged 1885), The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (staged 1893; Russian translation 1896), and The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith (staged 1895; Russian translation 1901). They depict the deceitful nature of bourgeois marriage and women’s lack of rights. However, they lack exact social referent and have many elements of a drawing-room melodrama. Pinero’s work of the 1920’s and 1930’s is of little interest.

WORKS

Plays [vols. 1-2]. London, 1891-95.
Social Plays, vols. 1-4. Edited by C. Hamilton. New York, 1917-22.
In Russian translation:
Besputnyi. Moscow, 1893.
Sovremennye amazonki. Moscow, 1906.
Na polputi. Moscow, 1912.

REFERENCES

Shaw, B. O drame i teatre. Moscow, 1963.
Dunkel, W. D. Sir A. Pinero. Chicago, 1941.
Lazenby, W. A. W. Pinero. New York [1972]. (Contains a bibliography.)